The Burning Skies (17 page)

T
he Praetorian triad’s going full throttle, punching out ahead of the main formation. The bulk of the combat’s now behind them. Which isn’t to say they’ve left it in the dust altogether. Sarmax starts unleashing his pulse rifle at long range on some wayward drones. The three men roar at ground level up and over a hill. The crashed ship is just ahead of them, half protruding from the gash it tore through the cylinder’s side. There’s some kind of activity atop what’s left of it. The Operative starts broadcasting on what’s left of the Praetorian frequencies.

“This is for anyone who’s still in the fight. What’s coming up behind us is the Throne’s own Hand. We’re going to storm the Aerie and rip the Rain apart. Tune into the following
frequency and stand by for new downloads. Anyone who doesn’t can die right here.”

“How do we know
you’re
not the Rain?” says someone. Sarmax fires his pulse rifle, takes off that someone’s head. The body topples.

“Any other questions?” yells the Operative as he hurtles in.

There aren’t. He knows these marines could just open up on him en masse. But he also knows they know they’re within range of the long-range guns atop the heavy vehicles. That they’re just going to have to roll the dice. The three men roar past the ship’s wreckage: the Operative to the left, Sarmax to the right, Lynx straight above. They keep on going, broadcasting that same message. The area of heaviest drop-ship deployment is just ahead of them.

But now the Operative feels something descend through his mind—something that suddenly drops in from above him in the jury-rigged zone, wraps him in its endless folds, commandeering his suit and his brain, propelling the latter out into the minds behind him and wiring over downloads. They’ve tuned into the frequency he stipulated. Ten Praetorian marines, one Praetorian officer, one Praetorian razor—

Not
a Praetorian razor.

Something else. The Operative feels something
click
within his skull. He hears a voice. It’s Haskell, along with the Hand’s own codes.

“Carson,” she says. “Leave this one to me. Keep going. Keep gathering the lost under our banner.”

He acknowledges, and accelerates as Lynx and Sarmax keep pace.

• • •

S
pencer watches the suits swoop past—watches as those suits are blotted out by a woman’s face that expands in from what seems to be some suddenly activated zone. The face curves about him, envelops him in endless eyes. And now a woman’s voice enfolds him within some endless hollow:

“Interesting. Wheels within wheels.”

“Who are you?”

“You’re
InfoCom,” replies the voice.

“Listen, I don’t know why they put me here,” says Spencer. He’s transmitting as rapidly as he can. “I serve Montrose and she serves the Throne and—”

“That’s why. The Throne covers all his bases. You were a counterweight against possible treachery within the Praetorian ranks. A conduit to sniff out possible treachery within InfoCom itself. None of which matters now. I need every razor I can get. These marines will stay with you until my vanguard reaches your position.”

The voice cuts out. Spencer shakes his head as though to clear it. The marines are looking at him.

“Sir,” says one.

“About fucking time,” replies Spencer.

“What are your orders?”

Spencer looks around. There’s combat on the far left. But the armored earthshakers roaring up the valley seem to have broken through whatever resistance they were encountering. They’re making straight for the wreckage on which Spencer and the soldiers are standing. At the rate they’re going, they’ll be here in less than a minute.

“My orders,” says Spencer, “are to do whatever the guys driving those things tell us.”

• • •

H
askell disconnects as her mind swoops up to take in the overall situation. It’s bleak. Seven of the eight Praetorian ships managed to unload their soldiers in drop ships along the cylinder. Two of those ships were the ones that docked at the New London spaceport. The troops within those were the ones that she started out with. The other five got deployed all along the cylinder, in drop-zone patterns calculated to pin down and destroy the two Rain triads that were lurking there. But the overthrow of the zone has thrown those Praetorians into chaos. They’re scattered, their chains of command shattered and their ability to tell friend from foe smashed. With the inevitable result that they’re fighting each other, letting the drones and robots of the Rain clean them up piecemeal.

But Haskell hasn’t given up. As her shaker gains height, she searches for the zone through which the Rain’s orchestrating all this. She’s getting glimpses of fragments here and there: clouds of what may or may not be communications flying back and forth. But everything she can discern is well south of the cylinder’s equator. She’s starting to suspect that the Rain triads are nowhere near the onrushing Praetorian wedge, and that all these drones have been prepped to operate without a zone, deliberately dumbed-down and programmed to just get in there and do as much damage as possible to anything that looks like organized opposition. Haskell knows damn well that by now the force that bears the Hand’s standard is the only thing that’s even capable of looking the part.

Which is why he’s ordered her to take such a chance with the Praetorian stragglers. Integrating their rewritten nodes into the zone she’s bootstrapped requires that she make herself vulnerable to hacks from Rain units wearing false colors. And that she risk exposing her physical location. So she’s working through proxies insofar as possible. The few razors under her command are now well out in front of the main
formation, taking heavy casualties. But she’s hoping that the influx of reinforcements they’re bringing in is worth the trade-off.

“As long as we keep them on the formation’s edges,” he says.

“I’ve cleared them,” she replies.

“I don’t care.”

And she can’t blame him. Not when every calculation has fallen short. Not when the Rain has proven the equal of every contingency. Not when God only knows what the next twenty kilometers have in store.

T
hey’re hugging the ground, well into the area where the main drops went down. They’re broadcasting the codes they’ve been given—the codes that override the Praetorians’ blocked systems, tell them to rally to the Hand. And from the remnants of buildings in which they’d taken shelter, from basements where they’d destroyed the droids within, from armored drop-pods they’d never left: Praetorians are returning the signals.

Not that they need that much convincing. Most of their razors are dead. Their world’s been torn apart. They can see the size of the force that’s bearing down upon them. They’re swarming in toward the Operative.

“Because now they’ve got a reason to live,” he says.

“You mean a reason to die,” says Lynx.

It’ll have to do. Because there’s plenty of fighting to be done. Most of which now seems to be occurring in the center: behind them, far to the right—distant flashes denoting fresh fighting at the spearhead of the main formation.

“Must be a whole mess of the fuckers still in front of us,” says Lynx.

“Not to mention the Rain’s hit teams,” says Sarmax.

“Who are inside the Aerie working out on the Throne,” says the Operative. “That fucking asteroid is where it’s at. These fucks are just trying to delay us.”

“And the Manilishi wants you to send
all
these marines back to the main force?” asks Sarmax.

“She gave me discretion.”

“So use it.”

“I intend to.”

S
pencer watches as the earthshakers sweep in toward him. Each is several meters long, covered with guns and turrets. One’s churning past the ship on treads. Another’s running on legs that are a blur. Another roars past on its jets. Another suddenly leaps; Spencer ducks involuntarily along with the soldiers standing next to him as it sails past them, hits the ground running on the other side of the ship. Another stops close to one of the fissures from which the ship is protruding. Its forward cockpit swivels, tilts upward like some misshapen head. Sensor-clumps that look disconcertingly like eyes regard Spencer.

“You the razor?” says a voice.

“I’m
a
razor,” replies Spencer.

“Then get in.”

A hatch opens just behind that forward cockpit. Spencer stares at it.

“Better do what he says,” says one of the Praetorians standing next to Spencer.

“What about you guys?”

“Never mind those guys,” says the voice. “Get down here.”

Spencer clambers down from the ruined ship—slides along panels, using ripped cables to steady himself—and grabs onto the edges of holes torn in the ship’s side. He soon
reaches the level of the shaker, which edges carefully forward until he can step over to it. He reaches out, grabs the hatch, pulls himself inside. The hatch swings shut behind him.

“Hold on,” says a voice—and in the next moment Spencer’s thrown to the floor as the shaker reverses at speed. He rolls against the wall, activates magnetic clamps as the vehicle starts to race forward. The space he’s in looks like the interior of a fuselage. A hatch leads rearward. Most of what’s further forward is cockpit. Windows are slits amidst instruments. A man’s working the controls. His hands are a blur as they play across the dials. He glances back at Spencer. His hair’s white. His eyes are hollow.